Sunday, January 22, 2012

Pro-Life Sunday

I used to have a blog on tumblr and wrote this post on there some time ago. I thought I would repost since it seems timely...today is the anniversary of Roe v. Wade. Abortion remains not only the most common surgical procedure in the US, but is also now the leading cause of death in the world. This is a tragedy.

I do not consider myself a prolife activist, although I am prolife. I speak about abortion and the death penalty mostly within my Christian community, where I feel I am on sure footing. In arguing with those who are not Christian or who do not believe in God, I struggle, because I get incredibly upset.

If a person has little to no belief in God, or it does not affect their lives, their guiding light is usually science and their own feelings (which they might call their ‘heart’). All that is understandable. Some of these people are liberal and some are more conservative; the large majority of them support the concept of marriage equality, that gay persons should be allowed to marry and adopt children. They view this as an equality fight: straight people marry, gay people marry. They call it the new civil rights issue, like equality between blacks and whites back in the 1960s. I can see their logic.

But I begin to get annoyed when they want to back off of abortion. They will not admit that the “fetus” is in fact a child. They protest that they don’t believe it is a life at that point, despite the fact that science calls it alive, just like scientists would scream about “life on Mars!” if it so much as found algae there. They claim the child not life, although if one of their friends said elatedly “I’m pregnant!” they would immediately begin talking about the baby as a live person.

But this recognition, protection, and joy is denied to many children. The child is alive, but they do not view it as a person. It’s not a person until the mother decides to recognize it and protect it. In a way, that’s an incredible statement of the meaning of motherhood in America: We, women, decide the fate of our children; we are their only protectors. Society will not care for them, doctors will not fulfill their hippocratic oath towards them, Congressmen and women will not vote to protect them, their communities will not come together to house or feed them, and oftentimes their fathers will not support them. It is the mother alone who bears their weight in her body and in her soul: she is entirely alone.

With this state of things, it is no wonder that a woman would choose abortion. She has no support to choose anything else. In fact, Roe v. Wade did not merely create a constitutional right for a mother to end her child’s life; it created a society that puts the blame for illegitimate children, poor children, overburdened mothers, on the shoulders of the mother. The question can always be asked, “why did you choose to have it then?” Pro-choice America created a societal milieu where the only choice that is really acceptable is abortion and/or silence.

These are children and I don’t believe one person out there doesn’t actually know that. I don’t believe certainly that any of the doctors, let alone nurses, volunteers, and lobbyists, are ignorant of the fact that a child in the womb is a life. But they support it because they think they are helping women. This is the touchstone of any moral code, however: you cannot justify a great ends by a horrible means. Blacks are not sub-human, they are human; homosexuals should not be subjected to cruelty or discrimination, because they are human. Abortion should be illegal because preborn children are still human, and being human matters.

To the women who are pregnant, you matter because you are human. Your child matters because they are human! We are humanity. We must stand together, or else turn on one another. We can disagree on how to help one another, how to spend our money, how to structure our nation, and what is ultimately True in the world. But we have to begin by recognizing that we are all human, we are all in this together, we are brothers and sisters of this race.